KVG Laboratories has built many custom speakers over the years. Here are just a few of them. Please check back every so often, this page is updated often.

Colonel Billy (click here for more information).

The KVG Laboratories Colonel Billy is a 12" guitar loudspeaker voiced for just that right tone for rockabilly music as well as other early rock-n-roll and popular music styles. Colonel Billy is inspired by the fullrange speakers used in early guitar amplifiers and portable PA system, yet boasts modern clarity and transient response. We start with our Tonalnico AlniCo magnet for traditional tone combined with extreme high-end definition that lets your fingering technique come through in all its glory, and reveals every nuance of the effects you play. Next, we add a 25 watt, 1" voice coil to a CTS-style "curved & seamed cone" for a brighter tone with medium breakup, and traditional rockabilly-style reedy tone. Our Flat Top dust cap gives Colonel Billy his Sweet-N-Smooth treble yet still allows for just the right amount of bite when overdriven. Finally, we lightly hand-dope the cone to eliminate cone cry and wolf tones that would mar your performance and make your amplifier sound awful.

The The F5 Tornado! Guitar Loudspeaker is the little 5" speaker that sounds huge. Its focused magnet assembly and advanced Kevlar cone produces a tone that has ultra-clean mids, extremely clean highs with lightning fast attack, The F5 Tornado! is perfect for speed players, acoustic players, or anyone who plays with heavy distortion, overdrive, or fuzz. Unexcelled for recording because its size and shape was designed with your microphone in mind. Perfect for electric mandolin too!

Great Eight (click here for more information).

The Great Eight Loudspeaker features a whizzer cone for extended highs, a short-throw voice coil for a clean-yet-grungy tone that hasa prominent overload crunch-like chime, and a hand-doped paper cone for reduced cone cry. Good for acoustic players or general recording and practice purposes.

Magnum Opus (click here for more information).

The KVG Laboratories Magnum Opus is the ultimate music instrument loudspeaker. An enormous 30-inches of tone like no other music instrument loudspeaker ever conceived. Yes, you read that correctly -- a 30-inch extended range music instrument loudspeaker. Honestly, this is truly the ultimate realization of the art of music instrument amplification.

The cone of the Magnum Opus is individually hand made and hand tuned. it is composed of KVG Laboratories RRCF-2 Radially-Reinforced Cellulose Fiber, carefully hand-doped to eliminate cone cry then trimmed by a surgical-quality laser for exact balance and reduced non-musical distortion. With a cone this large, any imbalance can lead to disaster, or at least to horrendous distortion. The motor features a 4-layer, 3.9" voice coil operating in a precisely-focused magnetic field. aluminum heat sink fins prevent power compression and reduce operating temperatures, giving the Magnum Opus its high quality. A "double spider" rear cone suspension assembly keeps the voice coil centered exactly in the high precision magnetic field.

The Magnum Opus cannot be equalled. It is as close to a universal music instrument speaker as can be attained: any instrument, any style of music, any type of amplifier performs at a level of tone and quality so superlative as to defy written description. All other music instrument loudspeakers are pale, mere shadows of tone, breathy whispers of sound in comparison to the Magnum Opus. This limited edition loudspeaker will take both your music instrument and your musical expression to places beyond your dreams, beyond your previous experience, into realms that you have never before ventured. The Magnum Opus, quite simply, will change your electric music instrument from caterpillar to butterfly.

The KVG Laboratories Ribbonaire is the ultimate acoustic music instrument loudspeaker. The Ribbonaire is designed specificially for vividly lifelike, perfectly natural sounding amplification of all acoustic stringed instruments. Its ribbon line source design mimics the way that a string instrument creates its sound, unlike cone speakers.

Specifications

Frequency Response: 65 to 20,000 Hz.

Sensitivity: 88 dB with 1 watt input, at 1 meter.

Ribbon Length: 40 inches.

Woofers: Two F5 Tornado 5" Kevlar composite drivers.

Crossover: KVG Laboratories "Event Horizon" Minimum Phase crossover.

Power Rating: 50 Watts RMS, 150 Watts Music Power.

Impedance: 6 Ohms.

Dimensions: 60 inches high x 9 inches wide x 11 inches deep.

The Ribbonaire is the ideal choice for the highest quality amplification of all bowed, plucked or struck musical instruments.

Ribbonaire Titanium (click here for more information).

The KVG Laboratories Ribbonaire Titanium is an uprated limited edition version of the Ribbonaire, the ultimate acoustic music instrument loudspeaker. The Ribbonaire Titanium is designed specifically for vividly lifelike, perfectly natural sounding amplification of all acoustic stringed instruments. Its ribbon line source design mimics the way that a string instrument creates its sound, unlike cone speakers. A pair of precision titanium woofers has been added that exactly matches the tonal characteristics of the main ribbon transducer. The result is a depth of detail and clarity normally associated only with full-range panel loudspeakers. The Ribbonaire Titanium is the extreme choice for the highest quality amplification of all acoustic musical instruments.

Specifications

Frequency Response: 55 to 20,000 Hz.

Sensitivity: 88 dB with 1 watt input, at 1 meter.

Ribbon Length: 40 inches.

Woofers: Two R5 Acoustar 5" titanium alloy drivers.

Crossover: KVG Laboratories "Event Horizon" Minimum Phase crossover.

Power Rating: 50 Watts RMS, 150 Watts Music Power.

Impedance: 6 Ohms.

Dimensions: 60 inches high x 9 inches wide x 11 inches deep.

Screamin' Mimi (click here for more information).

The Screemin' Mimi was a fun project. A customer wanted a music instrument speaker that had a very crisp attack with a nice sense of bite and extended treble for use with his Mandocaster electric mandolin, Gibson Les Paul Goldtop, and a Korg Triton keyboard. The loudspeaker needed to work with a small practice amplifier, and he wanted to match the look of some home stereo speakers he had built. The result is The Screemin' Mimi, featuring a custom 8-inch fullrange augmented by a piezo tweeter. The final design was built into a spare speaker cabinet left over from the customer's speaker construction project, and was finished like an electric guitar with red metal flake on its sides. The photo shows the Screemin' Mimi with the black fabric grille that matches the home stereo speakers removed.

That Seventies Speaker One (click here for more information).

Recently a customer wanted a small bookshelf speaker that captured the sound of the typical small "tuned port" bookshelf speaker from the 1970s, like the STR Beta or ElectroVoice Sentry III. Now you don't have to find an antique speaker and hope you can have it restored. The sound of the '70s is enjoying a renaissance, as listeners seek out 1970s stereo equipment as well as reissues of the music of the times. Smooth midrange, powerful yet clean bass, and crisp detailed treble that defined the sound of many 1970s speakers.

We decided to make something that is the essence of '70s sound: small paper cone woofer, piezo tweeter and a classic old-school (pre-Theile/Small parameters) bass-reflex cabinet. That Seventies Speaker One brings back the sound of 1970s-vintage stereo in a new-production loudspeaker.

Like many 1970s originals, That Seventies Speaker One has the same features that were "cutting edge" for the day:

Time aligned woofer and tweeter means that the sound from both arrive at your ear at the same time. This allows the loudspeaker to reproduce finer detail than non-time-aligned designs, and helps preserve the harmonic structure of music and speech. No complex cabinetry or electronics are necessary for the D-50a to be time aligned because the length of the tweeter horn and depth of the woofer was selected to accurately align the acoustic centers of both drivers.

Bass reflex cabinet designed using classic mathematics (developed from Rayleigh derived and Helmholtz analyses of resonators) so that the loudspeaker has the optimum balance of bass response and low distortion.

The "SST: Solid State Tweeter" for crisp and detailed treble with low distortion. These horn-loaded piezo tweeters are capable of excellent sound, yet too often are regarded as shrill or harsh. The tweeter's diaphragm is near-perfect match for the tonality of the woofer, creating a seamless blending of the woofer's and tweeter's sound. this gives the little speaker the vivid spatial imaging normally associated only with exotic fullrange speakers, electrostatic or omnidirectional speakers.

Proprietary crossover made with polypropylene capacitors and large-wire-gauge inductors. The crossover is designed to eliminate the harshness and shrill treble that is often associated with piezo tweeters. Most speakers that have piezo tweeters don't use a full crossover with the tweeter, but instead a simple series resistor. This isn't adequate and is the reason why most other speakers with piezo tweeters are harsh and shrill.

Very rugged -- you can even play an electric guitar through it without damage. (This would damage almost any home stereo loudspeaker.)

As with most 1970s speaker designs, That Seventies Speaker One sounds best when placed in the room's corners and aimed toward the center of the room. Alternatively, That Seventies Speaker One may be mounted on a wall, placed on a stand and set against a wall or placed on bookshelves. Most modern audiophile speakers are intended to be placed on stands in the middle of the room, away from the walls. Although That Seventies Speaker One can be placed the same way, the bass may be deficient because That Seventies Speaker One uses the wall as an extension of its woofer, and therefore needs the close proximity of a wall or a room corner to achieve its deepest bass.